Lyndon and Benito

Essay series:

Carlos Hugo, not without remarks abt Tito, Nestor Makhnov, Mussolini Lyndon and Benito Tarama or Caviare, Righteous Pricing Comment on Thomas Storck

As a friend at once of Mussolini and Lyndon LaRouche*, it bugs me from time to time to see LaRouche or his associates associate Mussolini and fascism with Synarchism.

Time magazine was created in 1923 as a mouthpiece for the American Synarchists, grouped around the banking interests of J.P. Morgan. It is hardly a coincidence that, simultaneous to the launching of Time, in Europe, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, another leading Synarchist, was launching his Pan-European Union, which would be a leading propaganda vehicle for the winning of support among Europe's financial oligarchy for the "Hitler-Mussolini" universal fascism project.**

There may have been some kind of project to make Hitler and Mussolini universally applicable models for fascism.

However, if you do read Chesterton about his visit in Rome, the Mussolini chapter, you will find that according to what Mussolini told him, Mussolini did not regard fascism as anything except a specifically Italian expedient. Mussolini was not doctrinaire about how each and every country should be run.

If you look up his speech of 3 jan. 1925, related to the Matteotti affair, where he had been accused of imitating the Cheka and of using it, he was not even doctrinaire about how Italy should be run. He volunteered to be tried according to paragraph 47. It was perhaps not his fault but that of the Secessione Aventiniana, that his speech was met with more applause than effect. Had parliamentarians of non-fascist or even anti-fascist parties have been there, he might have been impeached as he offered to be.

Of course we do not know whether he would have made that offer if there had been such chances of its being accepted. We do not know that he would have made the offer, but we do not know he would not have made it. But we do know that he did make it, though in a climate in the Italian parliament in which its effectiveness as putting him on trial was to say the least doubtful. And we do know that according to his words on the occasion, fascism was not God's or Evolution's or whatever's law on how any and every country should be run, but an expedient for Italy then and there.

We could suspect he had an idea Evolution offered no law once and for all knowable to man, but we do not know him to have expressed such a horror. Because if he had, how could his brother Alessandro, a Catholic and thus rooted in Natural Law have supported him? And so many other Catholics, including the part time coalition with Dom Luigi Sturzo's and Alcide Degasperi's Christian Democrats?

So, though Synarchists may have supported fascism - "universal fascism" even - we can say that the original fascist was not a Synarchist supporting universal fascism. The worst we can say was that he was willing to play with power in ways in which he risked being a puppet. During the Salò Republic we do not know if he had much choice: he was delivered from one prison, a visible such, unto an invisible captivity under the German Nazis. One more thing about it: one of his accusers in Matteotti murder, was during that period shown the Matteotti papers by Mussolini, and he concluded for his part that Il Duce had been cleared through those papers.

Luce had a visceral hatred of FDR and the New Deal. He attacked them both on his speaking tours and in print. Intimates reported that he became apoplectic with violent rage at the mere mention of FDR's name.

Does it follow that Mussolini had that too? I think not.

Shutting down violent strikes (notably such as included violence against farmers) while supporting some striking oneself and then generally improving conditions for workers when one gets the chance - Luce may have missed that aspect but Chesterton did not - does not strike me as very Republican politics in Economics.

Has LaRouche or have Steven P Meyer and Jeffrey Steinberg ever analysed the Programma di San Sepolcro of the original Fasci di Combattomento? Is he or are they aware of the fact that Jews (and alas Masons too) played a role in helping Musso to power, and that he was long pretty scornful towards any idea of racialism?

That the Carta della Razza of 1938 was a complete turnabout (Chesterton had interviewed him during his still antiracialist period) from the kind of politics that anti-Semites and Racialists admiring Hitler were hardly into letting through? That the mayor of Assisi when helping Padre Ruffino Nicacci's Assis Underground felt he was quite in the line with Mussolini in his older and better days, according to Alexander Ramati's researched novel?

I think that Il Duce may own part of his bad reputation in the English speaking world not just to avowed antifascists, but also to admirers of the less prudent kind, such as admired Hitler (and thus Sanger) as well or even more. Chesterton and Benito specifically mentioned Mosley and at least before Gilbert Keith the "old syndicalist" never expressed any admiration for that man. I wonder if Mussolini would have put Luce in the same category. But I think he might have been too much of a sucker for good press to really protest against the articles of Luce, even when lopsided. And maybe some of LaRouche's distancing from fascism may be due to attacks from Jewish interest organisations who resent the similar approach of fascists (at least Hitler) and LaRouche in limiting interest rates. Not at all suggesting all and every Jew is a Shylock, but I think there might be some connections between Rotschilds and ADL, and Lyndon may have noted that.

Fact is the one notable strike condoned by Fasci di Combattimento was against Fiat factories obeying government in raising working hours. I think what EIR habitually describes as Synarchism is rather in the line of FIAT than in that of:

Per il problema sociale:

NOI VOGLIAMO:

a) — La sollecita promulgazione di una Legge dello Stato che sancisca per tutti i lavoratori la giornata legale di otto ore di lavoro.

b) — I minimi di paga.

...***

Wherewith I end this essay until it grow too long.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Georges Pompidou
21-III-2012

*When I say "friend of LaRouche" I mean from my view: I am not saying he or his adherents are returning my friendship. The reserve I have met when sending out parts of my material actually suggests the opposite. I recall Maurras, who, when asked "is de la Tour de Pin of the Action Française" answered a resounding "No, it is Action Française which is of de la Tour de Pin". One thing is for certain about La Rouche and Maurras: both admire people like Colbert.

**Henry Luce's Empire of Fascism
by Steven P. Meyer and Jeffrey Steinberg
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/site_packages/3125ccf_luce.html

***Manifesto dei Fasci italiani di combattimento, pubblicato su "Il Popolo d'Italia" del 6 giugno 1919
(su WIKISOURCE)
http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_dei_Fasci_italiani_di_combattimento,_pubblicato_su_"Il_Popolo_d'Italia"_del_6_giugno_1919